All my life I have heard the expression, and had it used against me at times, “you want to have your cake and eat it too,” and I never understood it. Now I finally do, I finally get it, after all these years.
I used to think about it, every time it would come up. I would look at the situations in which it came up, and see how it applied. I used to closely examine everything that I had said, the suggestions, or desires I had expressed, etc., that would elicit that particular response, and I just couldn’t get what it meant. To me the answer was always, “Yes!” In fact, later in life I would go on to say, “What’s the use of having a cake, if you can’t eat it,” which would only incense the person who had used that phrase against me, because they had bought into the phrase when it was sold to them, even though, I am sure they never understood it either.
To me it’s like asking the following questions, “You want to go to Vegas and enjoy yourself?” “You want to have a bike and be able to ride it?” “You want to have a meal and eat it?” To me, it’s a no brainer. This reminds me of some of the lyrics to Howard Jones’ song “No One Is To Blame,” the ones that say…
“You can look at the menu, but you just can’t eat
You can feel the cushion, but you can’t have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool, but you can’t have a swim
You can feel the punishment, but you can’t commit the sin…”
I think that “buying into” something that we don’t understand or agree with is very dangerous, but turning around and “selling it” to someone else, our kids, our loved ones, our friends… is out and out disastrous and the foundation for brain washing, control and manipulation.
What I finally understood this morning is not the phrase itself, because in my opinion, the phrase is a non-sequitur and should never have been said, or propagated. What finally made “sense” and, again, in my opinion, why the phrase has been so popular, is that this is how our humanity feels like in our culture. It is an outward expression of what we feel. We feel that we have to make choices between what we want and what we need, or what we would like to do and what we have to do, or what we like and what we have, or what we think and what others think for us.
We have been taught that we “can’t have our cake and eat it too,” and therefore, in situations where one who is controlling another needs to have a non-reason to control, they can use the phrase. And the saddest thing to me is that even without understanding it, we use this phrase against each other and make our lives so much harder and confusion.
If we were to analyze that phrase in a laboratory, it wouldn’t even make it in the door and it would be thrown out. There would be no scientist around who would take it as a viable hypothesis to even test it. But assuming it made it in, it would immediately be put up against situations where this phrase doesn’t work and then thrown out. For example, could you just hear someone saying to you, “you want to order a meal, AND you want to eat it too?” How about, “you want to go to Disneyland, AND you want to have fun?” None of this makes any sense. And yet, we somehow have convinced ourselves that there are situation where such a non-sequitur is appropriate, despite the facts.
The other thing this phrase does is come from a lack consciousness. From my understanding, though I have not always believed it, nor have I always been able to take advantage of it, but the Universe has an abundance consciousness. Lack consciousness was only invented so that the abundant could be even more abundant and the not so abundant could be not so abundant, and somehow, be happy about it, accept it, or comply with it. And then we wonder why lack breeds lack in our lives and our families.
In the past few several years, I have heard some “self-help” teachers say that we CAN have our cake and eat it too. Well, that’s fine and good, and I agree. But I take it one step forward. We MUST have our cake and eat it too. We are here to do just that. We want and need to know what cake we have come for, have a desire for, are connected to, are on a mission about,… and then we must go for the cake and we must eat it, enjoy it, be nourished by it. It is our right, our duty, what we came for.
Whether or not this phrase or this consciousness has been “put upon” us or we inherited or bought into it, or whatever the case, the time is now to stop using it, believing it, trying to make sense of it, and instead go back to trusting that little voice inside you that first told you as a child that the phrase didn’t make sense, before you accepted it, and take back your knowing and your truth and live in it. Or better yet, eat it!